From the setting sun to the ancient tomb, Poussin’s subject is time passing. We sense his longing for a lost past.
Nicolas Poussin, Et in Arcadia Ego, 1637–38, oil on canvas, 87 x 120 cm (Musée du Louvre, Paris). Speakers: Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker
[0:00] [music]
Dr. Steven Zucker: [0:03] We’re in the Louvre, and we’re looking at a Nicolas Poussin, “Et in Arcadia Ego.” We have four figures. We see ancient shepherds and a very classical female figure.
Dr. Beth Harris: [0:15] Clearly based on ancient Greek and Roman sculpture, as are all the figures, actually, and that treatment of the drapery that looks back to ancient Greece and the Classical period.
Dr. Zucker: [0:26] Right in the center, the largest, most dominant form is a tomb, this huge, solid block of masonry…
Dr. Harris: [0:33] And a figure who’s pointing at it and looks back at the female figure, almost alarmed at what they’re reading.
Dr. Zucker: [0:41] There’s a little ambiguity. Is it possible they’re having difficulty reading? Do they not know this language, or, you’re right, are they disturbed by the message?
Dr. Harris: [0:48] “I too am in Arcadia,” meaning even death is in Arcadia. The landscape has a setting sun. There’s a strong shadow on the tomb cast by the kneeling figure. There’s a real sense of a poetic passage of time.
Dr. Zucker: [1:05] That issue of time is important. If you look at the tomb, it’s not new. Although it’s stone, it’s been harmed over time. We get a sense that it is even more ancient than these ancient people, and this is a bridge back in time. Poussin was so interested in the archaeology of the past…
Dr. Harris: [1:21] That’s right.
Dr. Zucker: [1:21] …and resurrecting it through color, through form, through style, and through subject.
Dr. Harris: [1:26] One gets a sense that in that looking back by Poussin to ancient Greek and Roman culture, he must have had a sense of…
Dr. Zucker: [1:34] Longing for the past.
Dr. Harris: [1:35] Also a sense of the transience of human life and of what human beings make.
Dr. Zucker: [1:41] In a sense, the power of art to transcend time in this way, both in terms of what’s represented, this tomb as a kind of art, but then also, of course, this painting itself.
[1:51] [music]
Nicolas Poussin, Et in Arcadia Ego, 1637–38, oil on canvas, 87 x 120 cm (Musée du Louvre, Paris)
Nicolas Poussin spent a lot of the 17th century thinking about the ancient classical world two millennia removed from his own time. The French early modern artist painted many classical scenes throughout his career referencing both ancient Greece and ancient Rome. Among the identifiable episodes of ancient history or mythological stories lies the enigmatic Et in Arcadia Ego (also known as Shepherds in Arcadia). A specific subject for Poussin’s 1638 painting of a classical scene has never been identified, leading art historians to extrapolate meaning from clues within the painting.
The modestly sized easel painting depicts four figures dressed in a 17th-century idea of ancient garb. They stand around a large stone tomb placed outdoors in a beautiful, but generic, landscape. Even though three of the figures lean and crouch around the tomb, their stability and grounded feet give an impression of stillness. Quiet pervades the painting. Even the object of their attention, the tomb, is rendered in the muted gray-brown tones of the dirt below. Only dark clouds adumbrate potential disturbance.
A common classical lexicon
Despite more than a millennium of historical distance, early modern Europe often found the ancient classical world a fascinating—and useful—lens for examining contemporary political circumstances. In Poussin’s native France, interest in antiquity was particularly high among the hereditary nobles known as the noblesse de robe (“nobility of the robe”), which made up a magistrate class in French society. Though Poussin moved to Rome in 1623 and with one exception remained there until his death in 1655, members of the noblesse de robe regularly patronized the expatriate painter who would send his paintings from Italy to France.
Left: Nicolas Poussin, The Funeral of Phocion, 1648, oil on canvas, 117.5 x 178 cm (National Museum Cardiff); right: Nicolas Poussin, The Continence of Scipio, 1640, oil on canvas, 163.5 x 114.5 cm (Pushkin Museum, Moscow)
Poussin was born in 1594 in Normandy, France as the son of a nobleman who had lost his fortune during the French Wars of Religion between Catholics and Protestants (1562–98). Like other men of his station, Poussin received a classical education that emphasized reading ancient Latin texts. The common cultural lexicon of ancient history, stories, and myths allowed the noblesse de robe to think about themes of political power, justice, and tyranny in the safely remote classical world. These are clearly seen in Poussin’s paintings the Continence of Scipio (which addressed the idea of restraint in political leaders), and The Burial of Phocion (which addressed the idea of individual sacrifice for the good of the state). The meaning of the Latin title, Et in Arcadia Ego, however, remains more elusive.
An elusive inscription
Though the figures contemplate quietly, they are engaged in a process of discovery. A shepherd in blue runs his finger along the tomb’s abraded stone surface. Distressed edges and missing chunks doubly remind the viewer that while the figures may be ancient, the tomb was even more ancient, ancient to them. The man in red turns his head in puzzlement as they attempt to decipher the inscription.
Tomb inscription (detail), Nicolas Poussin, Et in Arcadia Ego, 1637–38, oil on canvas, 87 x 120 cm (Musée du Louvre, Paris)
The tomb’s inscription reads “Et in Arcadia Ego,” literally translated “And in Arcadia I.” Arcadia, an ancient Greek mythical pastoral land of unspoiled nature, recurs regularly as a theme in classical poetry. The peaceful landscape of shepherds and grazing sheep served as an idyllic utopia, an imaginary escape from the cares of human civilization. Over the centuries the concept of Arcadia has had a tendency of resurfacing during periods of political anxiety. [1] During the 1630s, Europe’s religious conflict had grown into the Thirty Years’ War, which lasted from 1618–48. Starting in 1635, France was fighting in the Franco-Spanish war that would not end until 1659.
Because Poussin did not paint a specific mythological or historical episode, we cannot refer to a text to find the speaker. Et in Arcadia Ego is not a history painting. It depicts no identifiable figures or specific location. Instead, the painting invites contemplation on its truncated phrase and what it might mean to reflect on the past.
The missing verb in the Latin inscription complicates interpretation. If the speaker of the inscription is meant to be the anonymous entombed person, the phrase might read “Et in Arcadia Ego Fui,” “and I, too, was in Arcadia.” [2] The past tense verb speaks to the loss of the Arcadian utopia and might carry a political message. However, the simplest verb and the one suggested by conventions of Latin grammar would make the phrase read “Et in Arcadia Ego Sum,” “And I, too, am in Arcadia.”
If the verb is present tense, the consensus has been that the speaker must be Death Itself i.e., “and I, Death, too, am in Arcadia.” In an influential 20th-century essay, the art historian Erwin Panofsky maintained “et in Arcadia ego” must be understood “Death is even in Arcadia”—and the evidence is the tomb itself. [3] The shepherds thus deal with the disconcerting revelation that even in paradise, death exists. [4]
Sebastian Brandt, “Daphnis ego in sylvis” from Publiij Virgiliiij Maronis Opera, published 1502 by J. Grieninger, woodcut (University of Heidelberg)
Et in Arcadia Ego
Though Poussin may have inscribed the phrase in crumbling stone, “et in Arcadia ego” was actually coined in the 17th century. It riffs, as an evolving meme does, on an earlier well-known piece of culture. In this case, the future Pope Clement IX, Giulio Rospigliosi, coined the new phrase echoing a line of poetry in Virgil’s Eclogues (a collection of Arcadian pastoral poetry). In the fifth eclogue, two herdsmen sing songs in honor of the deceased Daphnis, a lauded singer. Line 43 provides an epitaph for the singer: “Daphnis ego in silvis,” “And so too I, Daphnis, was in the woods.”
A 1517 woodcut illustrating a volume of Virgil provides the basic iconography that 17th-century artists adapted for the updated phrase. Shepherds with staffs gather around a tomb in a bucolic setting. The tomb bears the inscription “Daphnis ego in sylvis.” The inclusion indicates cultural familiarity with that specific line in Virgil’s fifth eclogue.
Guercino, Et in Arcadia Ego, c. 1618, oil on canvas, 78 x 89 cm (Palazzo Barberini, Rome)
In visual art, “et in Arcadia ego” likely first appeared in Guercino’s canvas of 1618–22 documented in the collection of Cardinal Antonio Barberini in 1644. The Arcadian shepherds are present and contemplating death in the form of a human skull joined by a mouse and a fly set upon a plinth inscribed “Et in Arcadia Ego.” In the tradition of a memento mori, the skull serves as speaker of the words “Et in Arcadia Ego.” (For an earlier example of speaking bones, see Masaccio’s Holy Trinity.)
Nicolas Poussin, The Arcadian Shepherds (Et in Arcadia Ego), 1627, oil on canvas, 101 x 82 cm (Chatsworth House, Derbyshire)
Poussin’s first version of Et in Arcadia Ego in 1627 retains both Guercino’s skull and his emotional expressiveness. [5] The figures strain to read the tomb’s inscription. The compositional diagonal tipping the shepherds off axis gives the painting a feeling of uneasy instability.
An allegorical figure of the river god Alpheus in the foreground pouring his waters joins the Arcadian shepherds. His presence anchors the painting in the mythological realm and renders the message of death in Arcadia more remote from present-day human concerns.
By the time Poussin took up the subject of Arcadian shepherds for a second time in the 1630s, his artistic practice had changed. The loose brushwork, larger figures, and a more tactile sensuousness of his first 1627 Et in Arcadia Ego transitioned to a tighter handling with carefully positioned figures often quoting Raphael compositions. The skull has disappeared.
Melancholy nostalgia
In Poussin’s second version of Et in Arcadia Ego, the action has stilled and emotions have quieted to meditation. The melancholy acknowledgement that death exists within Arcadia complicates a painting that might otherwise invoke simple nostalgia for fabled halcyon paradise.
Though many have tried to securely identify the speaker of “et in Arcadia ego,” the “ego” remains indeterminate. It might be Daphnis; it could be Death. The “ego” might also be the viewer. For we, too, gather and examine the tomb with the Arcadian shepherds. [6] We too, along with our human mortality, view the tomb from our perspective in the present recognizing the person in the tomb has died. Eventually we will realize the classically-dressed shepherds also belong to the unreachable past where we will go ourselves one day.
